is it possible that some or part of the development costs could be written off once the result was donated to the non-profit?
Well, I probably should comment on this since I have had to study a bit about nonprofits.
For tangible items, the amount deductible is above the FMV or Fair Market Value. If you sell a mug or t-shirt as a nonprofit and mark it up 50%, then that 50% of "profit" you made is tax-deductible by the person. It's considered a donation.
Since free software has no fair market value, there is no way to value it. Legally, it's probably "valueless". Valueless things can be donated but where the line is with free software in terms of deduction, I'm not sure.
Now, again, I'm not an expert on the topic.. but it would be suicidal to screw with the IRS and just say, "Well, this cost $10M to produce and I'm deducting it". That's a great way to screw yourself and everyone associated with you.
Assuming that an NPO (nonprofit organization) was formed (or an existing one) and did take it over, every NPO is on a very [very] tight budget with limited resources, so whatever happens with Nautilus will be very limited and amateurish compared to the grandiose scale of what was being proposed.
IMHO, it is probably a positive thing that commercial influence was drained from Nautilus so it can be taken seriously by the community. There was some skepticism in replacing GMC with a commercially-backed product, though as I've said before I really think Eazel are good guys in a bad predicament.
Lucas
--
The Spindl3top Foundation, Inc. - Cambridge, MA
Back in early 2000, when I alarmedly learned that Eazel was developing "just" a file manager, I faxed Bud Tribble about the possibility of developing/using something like GNUstep instead because it had roots with NeXTSTEP and MOSX. At that time, it seemed like one could tap into the marketable aspect of similar API's. Apple had just announced the layering of MOSX with Darwin; it seemed like an interesting thing, particularly because Tribble was from NeXT and Andy et al. were from 0ld sk00l Apple.
Tribble responded intelligently, which showed me that, although the idea was (of course) a pipedream, he actually had heard of the technologies enough to talk about it. For me, I think, that's the difference in my mind between Eazel and the normal dot-com carnage - the Eazelites are geeks who got caught up in the 99-00 goldrush and were burned. We can fault them severely for that, but I think that, collectively in the community, there seems to be a very silent sense of respect for what they tried to do.
No, I'm not talking about the entire body of Taiwanese, but (since we import an incredible amount of stuff from there) the Taiwanese hardware industry during the first three quarters of 2000. The dot-coms were asking for as many products as possible for as cheap as possible... a lot of dot-coms were giving them out for cheap or for free, so they didn't care what the quality was. I'm not just talking about a single mobo or power supply.
At that time, we had massive problems with Taiwanese tech products in the supply chain which were built. Power supplies down to cases down to motherboards. Quality control issues, from "oops, we forgot to include jumpers" to "oops, this causes disk corruption and we'll get around to fixing it eventually".
So, what I was saying is, it is worth the wait to let Tyan get it right versus getting it out because public pressure demands it.
Last year Taiwan put out some terrible, buggy products, so I would say that the wait will be worth it... particularly if we're going to have to rely on them.
If something like this took off in lesser areas of the world, they would probably be an instant hit here.
It kinda reminds me of the old, ruggedized GRiDpad mixed with the old "tan and monochrome" Macintosh computers.
I've always wondered why monochrome couldn't be used just to cut the prices of things. Most of us don't really need the color, but it would be nice to have a cheap, hackable, portable e-book/tablet/linux device. Apps would probably take off with an open architecture and no licensing.
I think the Palm is great, but having some sort of half-desktop/half-PDA device that would allow more flexibility would be really cool.
Yeah, disregard my slagging comments about Streetlawyer. I've talked with him via e-mail and we're cool..
He's coming to it from a perspective of investigative reporting; he's an actual person, a journalist who goes after conmen over in Europe. He was suspicious of the article I wrote last November because I couldn't produce the exact details he was looking for. He said that he doesn't doubt that my intentions were good, but that I did it in the wrong way... yeah, he's right in several respects... I did. I'm a novice, what can I say.
I didn't "bow to public pressure" or whatever because there really hasn't been any, except for maybe two or three people. I think most people don't really care one way or the other because so much more repugnant stuff is going on these days.
In my case, it was naivity more than anything else.. I've got no "PR department" and I'm just an average user doing this for the first time. At that time, I was right out of school. In the long run, it really will not matter... and this has been a learning experience.
He says I should have just said that I listened to people in the community and did the nonprofit thing... that I looked bad when I pretended otherwise... I thought I had said that, so I'm saying it now.
So, on my side of things, please disregard my pretty lame slagging of him. I shouldn't have done it in the first place because it makes me look bad, but, on the other hand, not retracting it makes me look worse... and if I'm going to look bad anyway, I'd rather look bad but have a less burdened conscience for having slagged him in the first place.
Actually, we weren't slagged so badly last time... at least nothing that I wouldn't have said if I couldn't check out the site and see what was going on these days (it is obviously a lot different from the googlecached stuff from six months ago)..
The "+4 conspiracy post" was just a part-time spork-wielding goatrapist pictured here (don't click that unless you want your eyes to pop out) whom we pissed off by voting down his article on K5. At that time, he had created an 17-page, intricate conspiracy theory about an organization that had a net profit of about $400 and one employee (me). I think it's funny, actually.
But, alas that is over... I actually lost a lot of money because I tried to put my efforts into too many profitless free-software things. We really wanted to go nonprofit but the costs and time needed in doing it otherwise, however, were so damn high that I had to bite my lip and figure out how to manually dissolve a company, how to form an organization, what is expected of a nonprofit, how to publish our accounting data for the public to see, etc. Reading IRS forms is not fun.
I'm surprised Flatpack (aka Spiers from K5) was modded up to +4... Why? Well, he forgot the other things that our notorious organization has done:
racketeering in local LUGs and, at gunpoint, forcing users to do a full install of Debian GNU/Linux from a crate of 3.5" floppies.
the unpublishably disgusting and controversial murder of Geekizoid founder, Scott "Vlad" Lockwood.
gluttonous consumption of caffeine and... and asking Matt Szulik of RedHat to feel our warm Bawls.
faking the suicide of CowboyNeal and Inoshiro caused by the depression from being in one too many questionable polls.
a fanatical devotion to old Nintendo games with Engrishy dialogue and a catchy theme song.
extortion stemming from stealing RMS' hippie flute so that he couldn't play music to his servers anymore. This was insanely scandalous, as the GNU servers crashed continually afterward.
incorporation of incantations to Bob Saget within the kernel source.
Anyway, that's my 2c... don't read into it too much or anything. Let's be real... like any geeky club, the aim is just to have fun, build cool stuff, hack free software, chill out, and not give a fsck. It's cool like dat.. and anyone is welcome.
It might be wise to go the legal route and set yourself up as a charity, using Paypal to solicit donations... at least that is what we're doing... particularly if you have goals that fit within IRS nonprofit 501(c)(3) guidelines.
The cost of keeping a website up is astronomical in terms of labor and money, particularly if you want to host a server from home... and, then, time spent on building in new features is many hours of coding. Not to mention DoS'ing, crapflooding, etc. that comes with the territory.
Now, you can solicit donations without nonprofit status, but if you're appealing to the community at large, you'll want to reassure the community that the IRS is keeping you in check and you're not going to walk off with their money.
I recommend tossing the banner ads unless you want to fully anger your users. There's no reason to use banner ads today unless you want to be viewed negatively.
CD-ROMs are good, though burning CD-ROMs is time-consuming and hellacious if your equipment is down. You're going to want to use another computer to do that, as I've tried to burn CDs on my webserver and... um... it's just not happening.
T-Shirts are great if you have a witty idea, but forking out $400 for x number of shirts sucks if they're just sitting there day after day because no one wants to buy them. So, also consider whether you want to/can afford to hold inventory or not.
I think people are kinda confused as to what Spindl3top is. This would have helped.
Basically, I'm killing the for-profit company and getting a job. I'm going to donate the assets of the for-profit to the nonprofit. Why? I'm tired of worrying about the bottom line, the profit margins, and all of the other pains in the ass that come with being for-profit. You quickly lose sight of what matters most, and it isn't money. When hardware isn't very profitable and you're losing money (though you're selling stuff), you get a really bad taste in your mouth. It's like, "Why did I do this in the first place? argh."
I do this stuff because it is fun for me, and for no other reason. I didn't want to go entirely under the FSF to construct the hardware database because I still want to do Blackbirds and Stallman didn't want to touch hardware. I love building them and working with the hardware; it's just nice to be able to design geek-like stuff. If others are interested, that's cool. There's no FUD involved, though.
Really, if anyone has any questions, they can call me up via voice and ask me, I don't mind. I do mind people quoting things on K5 out of context and attaching conspiracy theories to them. As I said on there, don't quote from me like it's the Bible, because I make mistakes like everyone else. The only thing Streetlawyer (on K5) had a problem with is that it wasn't charitable. Sure, I'm the same way... skeptical of for-profit stuff. Now it will be and the for-profit will be killed because I've always felt it was the right thing to do... I just didn't know how and didn't want to spend another $3000 on lawyers. Now, with the help of others in the community, we know how and we're going to do it.
I'm getting a job like everyone else and will do this for fun again.... and that is what I'm looking forward to.
If you're interested in being on the board in the new nonprofit or just helping out, we're having a meeting this month here in Cambridge, Mass. to finalize our articles/goals and elect boardmembers... and, as usual, hang out and talk geek -- nothing too formal.
How on earth can something with x86 CPUs be an "übergeek`s dream"? Who's dreaming of lame, boring pentiums? That's not even a "geek's dream"!
Well, it's why we sort of decide what things go in it. As I've written before, I would love to have an alternative. Of course, try to get mobos from anywhere else. Whether you like it or not, we're pretty much stuck with x86 and its foibles... I mean, if you've got a better way, let me know.
Yeah, the weak link here is the 384K DSL line. The original ISP went bankrupt and, through a myriad of circumstances, we ended up with a very expensive UUNet contract.
That was before we could go nonprofit. You've quoted it entirely out of context. Michael was just trying to defend me.
Basically, I'm going to donate most of the assets of this for-profit company to the new nonprofit. I'm killing my company. Why? I'm tired of worry about a bottom-line, I'm tired of all of the shit involved with for-profit companies because it prevents me from the intangible goals I set out for in the first place... the goals that don't generate profit.
This is just more FUD. For the record, I'm getting a job like everyone else.
Granted, most of the "shakers" in 1999 and 2000 were loud and obnoxious, but he pretty much brought it upon himself and tried to roll as a hacker and a power-broker.
Unfortunately, it backfired because he alienated the people who supported him the strongest.
Here is Joe Hacker, being made to work 25-hours per week on his dot-com's "next biggest thing" web rollout, and what does ESR do? He becomes the arrogant power-broker, continuing to give these tiresome, grandiose prophetic speeches of hype and propaganda that were all too common... thus, he tied himself to the times.
Frankly, his opinion seems irrelevant today as free software has progressed into a new era where people are actually doing things with it... rather than spewing visionary rhetoric about how great it is and world-dominance and the "revolution", whatever that was.
People (particularly programmers) don't care too much if you hype your own program or your own creation. I think most of us that have designed something creatively have been proud of what we have done and have shown a few people. Some of us have projects that are very popular because others have liked it. But, for someone else to take your program and slickly promote it for money is another thing. ESR's propaganda was taking the work that free software programmers have done over the past years and skewing it in a way that was media-friendly (e.g., nauseatingly, overly anti-Microsoft; great for getting publicity and generating controversy) and highly-unpalatable to the free software community. The media portrayed ESR as speaking for the ENTIRE community.
Thus, I don't think anyone is in that much of a rush to get ESR back as the self-appointed "official spokesperson" of free software.
It's kinda funny that WindowMaker (which is affiliated with GNUstep (hence the logo at the top of the dock)) is running -- since GNUstep represents NeXT circa 1994, I suppose you can have three entirely separate generations of software running. --
...when the PS1 came out and it was really selling slowly at first. I was thinking, "Sony has been dominant in so many industries, they can't possibly be dominate gaming!" Man, I was wrong.
The PS1, IMHO, sucked compared to the competition but it had so many damn games... and that is peoples' main motivation for buying a console: does it have games? Is this an investment that I can buy other games for?
It just goes to show that Microsoft and Sony both know how to market aggressively and appeal to the people/industries at large.
What I can't wait to see is them going head-to-head. It's really going to get interesting now, since neither one has been known to back down from an industry. --
MySQL does a great job of doing things; yeah, it doesn't have transactions or foreign keys and the like to keep an incredible efficiency rate, but PostrgreSQL is another free alternative if you want to do this on the database end instead of in the program.
I'm not sure why, even if they completely GPL'ed mSQL, the world needs another SQL? Is there any mental differentiation between the products currently out there?
I think the problem here is simply mindshare and coming into a crowded SQL market where enterprise has already been adopting free alternatives to Oracle and the other extremely expensive SQL databases. Reinventing the wheel by introducing mSQL again seems futile at best, foolish at worse when they could be marketing their database expertise toward the fairly lucrative services industry for the enterprise sector. --
Jobs' views are crucial in a profitless PC market
on
Jobs Plays It Frank
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· Score: 4
Let me tell you from experience that the PC market, Apple included, is almost profitless at this point. There are so many reasons not to sell computers, which is why I think that Jobs has to get into reseller's heads that selling Macs is not a losing battle.
Most of the people who sell Macs don't make a lot of money from it, regardless of the markup. People are not willing to pay for PCs with inadequate anything right now, no matter how revolutionary Apple is.
Jobs' presence was made because he wants to assert people that he is trying to do his best to get Apple back into shape. If Apple dies in the process, he wants history to remember that he gave it his best shot, even risking a PR nightmare by using profanity in front of his dealers.
He's a smart guy; those of us who have seen Apple's latest reports know that Apple is in a little bit of trouble. Steve is dealing with a changing world that is not bending to Apple the way it used to because the younger generation doesn't remember the "old" Apple and, frankly, couldn't care less. It's an uphill battle, but, if he can't do it and fails, I don't think anyone could have done it better.
Someone was complaining that the posting on Slashdot was unfounded because the website didn't say anything about it; here's the link (entitled "Buh-Bye!", and the pasted text):
>It's been a great year everyone. Now it is >time for DotComGuy to re-enter society. Can >society handle it???
>From all of us here at DotComGuy Inc., and >from DotComGuy himself, thanks to all of you >for your support and appreciation these past >366 days.
>Be on the lookout though...you never know >what might happen next, or where DotComGuy >will pop up!
This is a straw-man argument. You can't immediately label the GNU project as communistic and then start destroying communism.
Free Software was born in America, bastion of capitalism, and is now shared by the world. How many people who support free software support communism?
>both rely on the principle that working together >as a community will produce better results than >each man for himself
Free software is intended to bring the community together to do needed work for the common good. I'm not sure what this has to do with communism. Communism is about labor and the government regulation of it to stop exploitation by 19th century Capitalists.
I don't see Stallman ranting about how all projects should fall under his (or anyone's) jurisdiction. Communism is about centralization; free software is about decentralization.
>the products made by Communists were, and are >inferior in build and technology
That is because communism is a system of government where anyone is guaranteed a job in a factory and forced to work. It promotes laziness because people are given money whether they do a good job or not. I don't see what this has to do with free software.
>Linux companies have fallen through the floor
Linux companies are no different than any other dot-com company. When you play with venture capital, you get burned. What does this have to do with free software?
Before trolling again, you might want to try reading some Marx to figure out if the application of 19th Century Philosophy really applies to the 21st century.
As has been said earlier, I think it is somewhat of a temporary tragedy that meeting in person loses out to Internet groups.
The reason is that I've noticed a lot of conversation on the Internet is often done with flaming and politics... and this includes free software/OSS development.
People seem to work better via personal contact because there is so much more information transmitted about a person and who the person is.
As I said, I think this is more of a temporary thing because we will soon have a way to collaborate using higher-bandwidth technologies that will be able to make meeting online much like meeting in person.
--
I'm not one to criticize free software companies, but I'm not sure how much different this is from other companies developing free software.
Helix, for instance, might not be democratic per se, but it is closely fixated and integrated with the free software community. It is run by free software developers and chooses to serve the same.
My concern is that this will be another VC-inspired dot-com with some slick guy (an ex-attorney, nonetheless) at the helm who is not a hacker and doesn't understand/care how hacker politics work.
If they did know how hacker politics work, for instance, they wouldn't be issuing "Press Releases" or forming a "Public Relations Department" (and mailing list). They also wouldn't be trumpeting him as a visionary who wants to produce the proverbial "next best thing". That's a great way to attract venture capital... but it's also a great way to gain the scorn and disdain of the free software community.
On the other hand, if they produce something interesting and can maintain themselves, I would love to eat my words.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I probably should comment on this since I have had to study a bit about nonprofits.
For tangible items, the amount deductible is above the FMV or Fair Market Value. If you sell a mug or t-shirt as a nonprofit and mark it up 50%, then that 50% of "profit" you made is tax-deductible by the person. It's considered a donation.
Since free software has no fair market value, there is no way to value it. Legally, it's probably "valueless". Valueless things can be donated but where the line is with free software in terms of deduction, I'm not sure.
Now, again, I'm not an expert on the topic.. but it would be suicidal to screw with the IRS and just say, "Well, this cost $10M to produce and I'm deducting it". That's a great way to screw yourself and everyone associated with you.
Assuming that an NPO (nonprofit organization) was formed (or an existing one) and did take it over, every NPO is on a very [very] tight budget with limited resources, so whatever happens with Nautilus will be very limited and amateurish compared to the grandiose scale of what was being proposed.
IMHO, it is probably a positive thing that commercial influence was drained from Nautilus so it can be taken seriously by the community. There was some skepticism in replacing GMC with a commercially-backed product, though as I've said before I really think Eazel are good guys in a bad predicament.
Lucas
--
The Spindl3top Foundation, Inc. - Cambridge, MA
Back in early 2000, when I alarmedly learned that Eazel was developing "just" a file manager, I faxed Bud Tribble about the possibility of developing/using something like GNUstep instead because it had roots with NeXTSTEP and MOSX. At that time, it seemed like one could tap into the marketable aspect of similar API's. Apple had just announced the layering of MOSX with Darwin; it seemed like an interesting thing, particularly because Tribble was from NeXT and Andy et al. were from 0ld sk00l Apple.
Tribble responded intelligently, which showed me that, although the idea was (of course) a pipedream, he actually had heard of the technologies enough to talk about it. For me, I think, that's the difference in my mind between Eazel and the normal dot-com carnage - the Eazelites are geeks who got caught up in the 99-00 goldrush and were burned. We can fault them severely for that, but I think that, collectively in the community, there seems to be a very silent sense of respect for what they tried to do.
At that time, we had massive problems with Taiwanese tech products in the supply chain which were built. Power supplies down to cases down to motherboards. Quality control issues, from "oops, we forgot to include jumpers" to "oops, this causes disk corruption and we'll get around to fixing it eventually".
So, what I was saying is, it is worth the wait to let Tyan get it right versus getting it out because public pressure demands it.
Last year Taiwan put out some terrible, buggy products, so I would say that the wait will be worth it... particularly if we're going to have to rely on them.
It kinda reminds me of the old, ruggedized GRiDpad mixed with the old "tan and monochrome" Macintosh computers.
I've always wondered why monochrome couldn't be used just to cut the prices of things. Most of us don't really need the color, but it would be nice to have a cheap, hackable, portable e-book/tablet/linux device. Apps would probably take off with an open architecture and no licensing.
I think the Palm is great, but having some sort of half-desktop/half-PDA device that would allow more flexibility would be really cool.
He's coming to it from a perspective of investigative reporting; he's an actual person, a journalist who goes after conmen over in Europe. He was suspicious of the article I wrote last November because I couldn't produce the exact details he was looking for. He said that he doesn't doubt that my intentions were good, but that I did it in the wrong way... yeah, he's right in several respects... I did. I'm a novice, what can I say.
I didn't "bow to public pressure" or whatever because there really hasn't been any, except for maybe two or three people. I think most people don't really care one way or the other because so much more repugnant stuff is going on these days.
In my case, it was naivity more than anything else.. I've got no "PR department" and I'm just an average user doing this for the first time. At that time, I was right out of school. In the long run, it really will not matter... and this has been a learning experience.
He says I should have just said that I listened to people in the community and did the nonprofit thing... that I looked bad when I pretended otherwise... I thought I had said that, so I'm saying it now.
So, on my side of things, please disregard my pretty lame slagging of him. I shouldn't have done it in the first place because it makes me look bad, but, on the other hand, not retracting it makes me look worse... and if I'm going to look bad anyway, I'd rather look bad but have a less burdened conscience for having slagged him in the first place.
Actually, we weren't slagged so badly last time... at least nothing that I wouldn't have said if I couldn't check out the site and see what was going on these days (it is obviously a lot different from the googlecached stuff from six months ago).. The "+4 conspiracy post" was just a part-time spork-wielding goatrapist pictured here (don't click that unless you want your eyes to pop out) whom we pissed off by voting down his article on K5. At that time, he had created an 17-page, intricate conspiracy theory about an organization that had a net profit of about $400 and one employee (me). I think it's funny, actually.
But, alas that is over... I actually lost a lot of money because I tried to put my efforts into too many profitless free-software things. We really wanted to go nonprofit but the costs and time needed in doing it otherwise, however, were so damn high that I had to bite my lip and figure out how to manually dissolve a company, how to form an organization, what is expected of a nonprofit, how to publish our accounting data for the public to see, etc. Reading IRS forms is not fun.
I'm surprised Flatpack (aka Spiers from K5) was modded up to +4... Why? Well, he forgot the other things that our notorious organization has done:
Anyway, that's my 2c... don't read into it too much or anything. Let's be real... like any geeky club, the aim is just to have fun, build cool stuff, hack free software, chill out, and not give a fsck. It's cool like dat.. and anyone is welcome.
Lucas (Wagner)
Spindl3top
Cambridge, Mass.
The cost of keeping a website up is astronomical in terms of labor and money, particularly if you want to host a server from home... and, then, time spent on building in new features is many hours of coding. Not to mention DoS'ing, crapflooding, etc. that comes with the territory.
Now, you can solicit donations without nonprofit status, but if you're appealing to the community at large, you'll want to reassure the community that the IRS is keeping you in check and you're not going to walk off with their money.
I recommend tossing the banner ads unless you want to fully anger your users. There's no reason to use banner ads today unless you want to be viewed negatively.
CD-ROMs are good, though burning CD-ROMs is time-consuming and hellacious if your equipment is down. You're going to want to use another computer to do that, as I've tried to burn CDs on my webserver and... um... it's just not happening.
T-Shirts are great if you have a witty idea, but forking out $400 for x number of shirts sucks if they're just sitting there day after day because no one wants to buy them. So, also consider whether you want to/can afford to hold inventory or not.
Lucas
Basically, I'm killing the for-profit company and getting a job. I'm going to donate the assets of the for-profit to the nonprofit. Why? I'm tired of worrying about the bottom line, the profit margins, and all of the other pains in the ass that come with being for-profit. You quickly lose sight of what matters most, and it isn't money. When hardware isn't very profitable and you're losing money (though you're selling stuff), you get a really bad taste in your mouth. It's like, "Why did I do this in the first place? argh."
I do this stuff because it is fun for me, and for no other reason. I didn't want to go entirely under the FSF to construct the hardware database because I still want to do Blackbirds and Stallman didn't want to touch hardware. I love building them and working with the hardware; it's just nice to be able to design geek-like stuff. If others are interested, that's cool. There's no FUD involved, though.
Really, if anyone has any questions, they can call me up via voice and ask me, I don't mind. I do mind people quoting things on K5 out of context and attaching conspiracy theories to them. As I said on there, don't quote from me like it's the Bible, because I make mistakes like everyone else. The only thing Streetlawyer (on K5) had a problem with is that it wasn't charitable. Sure, I'm the same way... skeptical of for-profit stuff. Now it will be and the for-profit will be killed because I've always felt it was the right thing to do... I just didn't know how and didn't want to spend another $3000 on lawyers. Now, with the help of others in the community, we know how and we're going to do it.
I'm getting a job like everyone else and will do this for fun again.... and that is what I'm looking forward to.
If you're interested in being on the board in the new nonprofit or just helping out, we're having a meeting this month here in Cambridge, Mass. to finalize our articles/goals and elect boardmembers... and, as usual, hang out and talk geek -- nothing too formal.
Lucas
Well, it's why we sort of decide what things go in it. As I've written before, I would love to have an alternative. Of course, try to get mobos from anywhere else. Whether you like it or not, we're pretty much stuck with x86 and its foibles... I mean, if you've got a better way, let me know.
I'm showing a load of 0.01 right now.
Basically, I'm going to donate most of the assets of this for-profit company to the new nonprofit. I'm killing my company. Why? I'm tired of worry about a bottom-line, I'm tired of all of the shit involved with for-profit companies because it prevents me from the intangible goals I set out for in the first place... the goals that don't generate profit.
This is just more FUD. For the record, I'm getting a job like everyone else.
Thank you, Tim Berners-Lee, for not patenting the web browser.
...if the web browser was patented? Thank you, Tim Burners-Lee.
Unfortunately, it backfired because he alienated the people who supported him the strongest.
Here is Joe Hacker, being made to work 25-hours per week on his dot-com's "next biggest thing" web rollout, and what does ESR do? He becomes the arrogant power-broker, continuing to give these tiresome, grandiose prophetic speeches of hype and propaganda that were all too common... thus, he tied himself to the times.
Frankly, his opinion seems irrelevant today as free software has progressed into a new era where people are actually doing things with it... rather than spewing visionary rhetoric about how great it is and world-dominance and the "revolution", whatever that was.
People (particularly programmers) don't care too much if you hype your own program or your own creation. I think most of us that have designed something creatively have been proud of what we have done and have shown a few people. Some of us have projects that are very popular because others have liked it. But, for someone else to take your program and slickly promote it for money is another thing. ESR's propaganda was taking the work that free software programmers have done over the past years and skewing it in a way that was media-friendly (e.g., nauseatingly, overly anti-Microsoft; great for getting publicity and generating controversy) and highly-unpalatable to the free software community. The media portrayed ESR as speaking for the ENTIRE community.
Thus, I don't think anyone is in that much of a rush to get ESR back as the self-appointed "official spokesperson" of free software.
--
It's kinda funny that WindowMaker (which is affiliated with GNUstep (hence the logo at the top of the dock)) is running -- since GNUstep represents NeXT circa 1994, I suppose you can have three entirely separate generations of software running.
--
The PS1, IMHO, sucked compared to the competition but it had so many damn games... and that is peoples' main motivation for buying a console: does it have games? Is this an investment that I can buy other games for?
It just goes to show that Microsoft and Sony both know how to market aggressively and appeal to the people/industries at large.
What I can't wait to see is them going head-to-head. It's really going to get interesting now, since neither one has been known to back down from an industry.
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MySQL does a great job of doing things; yeah, it doesn't have transactions or foreign keys and the like to keep an incredible efficiency rate, but PostrgreSQL is another free alternative if you want to do this on the database end instead of in the program.
I'm not sure why, even if they completely GPL'ed mSQL, the world needs another SQL? Is there any mental differentiation between the products currently out there?
I think the problem here is simply mindshare and coming into a crowded SQL market where enterprise has already been adopting free alternatives to Oracle and the other extremely expensive SQL databases. Reinventing the wheel by introducing mSQL again seems futile at best, foolish at worse when they could be marketing their database expertise toward the fairly lucrative services industry for the enterprise sector.
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Let me tell you from experience that the PC market, Apple included, is almost profitless at this point. There are so many reasons not to sell computers, which is why I think that Jobs has to get into reseller's heads that selling Macs is not a losing battle.
Most of the people who sell Macs don't make a lot of money from it, regardless of the markup. People are not willing to pay for PCs with inadequate anything right now, no matter how revolutionary Apple is.
Jobs' presence was made because he wants to assert people that he is trying to do his best to get Apple back into shape. If Apple dies in the process, he wants history to remember that he gave it his best shot, even risking a PR nightmare by using profanity in front of his dealers.
He's a smart guy; those of us who have seen Apple's latest reports know that Apple is in a little bit of trouble. Steve is dealing with a changing world that is not bending to Apple the way it used to because the younger generation doesn't remember the "old" Apple and, frankly, couldn't care less. It's an uphill battle, but, if he can't do it and fails, I don't think anyone could have done it better.
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a.) This doesn't cover rumors ("original sources" other than the publication) submitted by people and not originating from the news magazine itself.
b.) Apple has to prove that their business was hurt substantially by the libel.
c.) Apple has to prove that it was a lengthy or reasonably harmful amount of time that this damage occurred.
d.) Slander is the vocal version, libel is the written version.
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>It's been a great year everyone. Now it is
>time for DotComGuy to re-enter society. Can
>society handle it???
>From all of us here at DotComGuy Inc., and
>from DotComGuy himself, thanks to all of you
>for your support and appreciation these past
>366 days.
>Be on the lookout though...you never know
>what might happen next, or where DotComGuy
>will pop up!
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This is a straw-man argument. You can't immediately label the GNU project as communistic and then start destroying communism.
Free Software was born in America, bastion of capitalism, and is now shared by the world. How many people who support free software support communism?
>both rely on the principle that working together
>as a community will produce better results than
>each man for himself
Free software is intended to bring the community together to do needed work for the common good. I'm not sure what this has to do with communism. Communism is about labor and the government regulation of it to stop exploitation by 19th century Capitalists.
I don't see Stallman ranting about how all projects should fall under his (or anyone's) jurisdiction. Communism is about centralization; free software is about decentralization.
>the products made by Communists were, and are
>inferior in build and technology
That is because communism is a system of government where anyone is guaranteed a job in a factory and forced to work. It promotes laziness because people are given money whether they do a good job or not. I don't see what this has to do with free software.
>Linux companies have fallen through the floor
Linux companies are no different than any other dot-com company. When you play with venture capital, you get burned. What does this have to do with free software?
Before trolling again, you might want to try reading some Marx to figure out if the application of 19th Century Philosophy really applies to the 21st century.
Lucas
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As has been said earlier, I think it is somewhat of a temporary tragedy that meeting in person loses out to Internet groups.
The reason is that I've noticed a lot of conversation on the Internet is often done with flaming and politics... and this includes free software/OSS development.
People seem to work better via personal contact because there is so much more information transmitted about a person and who the person is.
As I said, I think this is more of a temporary thing because we will soon have a way to collaborate using higher-bandwidth technologies that will be able to make meeting online much like meeting in person.
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I'm not one to criticize free software companies, but I'm not sure how much different this is from other companies developing free software.
Helix, for instance, might not be democratic per se, but it is closely fixated and integrated with the free software community. It is run by free software developers and chooses to serve the same.
My concern is that this will be another VC-inspired dot-com with some slick guy (an ex-attorney, nonetheless) at the helm who is not a hacker and doesn't understand/care how hacker politics work.
If they did know how hacker politics work, for instance, they wouldn't be issuing "Press Releases" or forming a "Public Relations Department" (and mailing list). They also wouldn't be trumpeting him as a visionary who wants to produce the proverbial "next best thing". That's a great way to attract venture capital... but it's also a great way to gain the scorn and disdain of the free software community.
On the other hand, if they produce something interesting and can maintain themselves, I would love to eat my words.
Lucas
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I was wondering what happened when the router lit up like a Christmas tree!
The full article is here.
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